Why is Summoner the most ignored, misunderstood and broken job?

[Razushu]

That's the thing, nobody mentioned anything of "melee" but Dallas in this thread.

I've never seen him need to have it mentioned first before

[Malamasala]

1. SMN as rare as COR? Haha, no. SMN has never, ever been as rare as COR; as I recall, COR has been the least-played job in the game since its release (yes, less played than PUP). The most recent Vana'diel Census that I've seen, 2009, shows twice as many SMNs as CORs.

Numerically you may be correct, but numbers are not the same as reality. You have to for example consider that you'd have twice as many COR players, if the job wasn't so expensive. That makes COR = SMN in popularity. Then you should consider that COR is a new job, while SMN is an old, meaning there should be more SMNs than CORs purely by years of existence. In addition to that, over half of those SMN numbers are people who leveled it only for astral burning good jobs to 75. So popularity ranked, COR is higher than SMN by far. But due to game exploits, SMN managed to be twice as popular.

3. No, SMN does not need melee gear. PUP was initially intended and conceptualized as a combination melee and pet job. Even since its first appearance in the series, Summoner has -never- been a melee job. Summoners have always been reliant on their summons, with no real melee capability.

What are you blabbering about? B staff being a proof you should not melee, but C H2H is proof you should? Just admit that you only looked at MP and said "Ah, MP, this job shouldn't melee". It is so obvious SMN is meant to melee, but on a wyvern level, being the opposite of a DRG. (Which falls short because wyverns dying isn't so bad, but Summoners dying is slightly workse. Not to mention avatars DoT is terrible compared to a DRG or a pet jug)

BRD is defined by its songs; if a job with other capabilities (i.e. SMN) could match those, BRD would be a completely, utterly useless job. COR, also, is mostly defined by its buffs, which are also unreliable since their strength is determined by dice rolls. SMN buffs may be short, but they're fairly strong and the avatars can deal damage in addition to using buffs.

But Summoner buffs rely on moon phase and time of day, which is worse than rolls, which you actually have a choice with. And if you want to talk strong, shell V is a god send for countering magic damage, but that isn't 3 minutes long. Glittering ruby, which is much worse, is 1 min long. It just doesn't make sense. Good spells lasting 15 min, bad spells 1 min, and they think it is balanced?

Shuerzo or whatever it is called is the best example. BRD can toss this up when needed, SMN has to summon titan, run up, have their global BP timer ready, activate it for 4 seconds, and spend 100 MP. It is like BRD is a million times better for this than SMN. Wouldn't it be enough if BRD was 4 times as good or something instead? Like keep it on Titan only, but make it cost no MP, have a 30 AOE range etc. so all you do is summon Titan, activate it, done.

5. What other gear does SMN really need? Using proper gear, SMN can cap both perpetuation reduction and blood pact delay reduction with no trouble, while still having other slots to boost summoning magic skill or avatar MAB or whatever else you may need.

I'd say anything but the monthly MAB armors we are getting. Either pet melee enhancements like +20% haste, or Summoner melee enhancements like +20% haste. Ideally hybrid sets, like BST and PUP get. Why SMN doesn't get hybrid sets when it is a hybrid job is beyond me. (Even better question is why we get BLM armors)

6. Minor point: DRG's Call Wyvern was it's 2-hour, an ability that's supposed to be incredibly strong; however, it was a pet that was important to DRG's utility and damage, in addition to dying easily and being difficult to heal.

It was the best 2 hour in the game. Imagine having a 2 hour that lasts until "it" dies. While other jobs had instant or 30 seconds 2 hours, DRGs had one that could last 24 hours, and it only needed to last 2 hours before it had maxed out potency.

How easy it died was a problem, but there was no problem with it being a 2 hour. Though most people could only see as far as "Well, we are fighting this BCNM and I want to 2 hour. Why can't my DRG deal massive damage in a short time?" so naturally they'd complain.

Not every spell that BLU or BLM or RDM gets is useful either; see, Deodorize. Does SMN have a higher proportion of less useful spells? Yes, very much so, but I'd rather have weak spirits than no spirits at all.

Do notice that none of those less useful abilites share the same spell timer though. Summoner is the only job with global timers, making a less excellent spell instantly useless due to unable to cast it while doing the best ones. I still think BLU and BLM should have global recasts as well. This would accomplish two things:

1) No BLU or BLM would pull hate, and they'd all live happily ever after for being a hate free job.
2) Everyone would know how terrible of an idea global timers is and we'd have the whole forum in a riot asking for their removal.

My conclusion: No, SMN is not the best job. Could it stand to be better? Yes, of course. However, SMN is able to deal good damage and utilize many full-party buffs with a rather high degree of personal safety, since the avatar is the one doing most of the work and can be quickly resummoned in the event that it is defeated. It is a strong job in its own ways.

I've never said anything else. The job is fine, as a kind of SATA THF without Treasure Hunter ability. We can join a fight, toss in some high numbers every minute, and keep ourselves alive.

But this is like saying, DRK is fine, it has stun. Or PLD is fine, it has cure IV. You can't just look at a single spell or JA, claim it is useful, and then say that it doesn't matter if nothing else works, you have one thing working. Another good example would be to say THF is fine, it has TH, back when TH was hit the mob once and then stand and watch.

What Summoner needs more than anything else, is interactivity. We need something to do between each Predator Claws. While we can toss out hastega, it is kind of pointless if there are nobody needing hastega in the vicinity. While we can toss out evasion aura, it is not sure to help. We could even swap to spirits, and they do nothing. We could run up and melee, but we aren't much better than PUPs in mage gear at melee.

All these "could, but not worth it" parts needs an improvement. You can't make the most jack of all trades jobs ever, and then have everything so weak you end up as a one trick pony.

EDIT: Didn't mean to make this post so long. Sorry for the wall o' text.

Consider your wall of text expanded.

[Razushu]

B in staff doesn't make us a hybrid job we are a pet job by this logic every job is a hybrid. We are a pet job with versatile pets if you want to melee with your pet use BST, DRG or PUP. What we need is a boost to our avatars our pets using our pets we can fill alot of roles in a party, on at least one occasion I have tanked DD'ed nuked buffed and main healed groups to success and with the exception of tanking(which was because the real tank got KO'd) I've performed these roles throughout the entire party and they were the reason I was asked to come. We would need a boost to our avatars damage survivablity and BP timer to make us a job worthy of a spot in any group.
Name one other thing that makes us a hybrid. Our only source of reliable 100% of the time damage mitigation is being out of range of attacks we are the softest job in the game, I fail to see how anyone can justify us being near the monster for more time than it takes to BP. On anything worth fighting we have enough life for 3 maybe 4 hits and even this is being generous. And if we're meleeing we'd be /SAM so we'd lose blink/SS further endangering us.

[Papesse]

Shuerzo or whatever it is called is the best example. BRD can toss this up when needed, SMN has to summon titan, run up, have their global BP timer ready, activate it for 4 seconds, and spend 100 MP. It is like BRD is a million times better for this than SMN. Wouldn't it be enough if BRD was 4 times as good or something instead? Like keep it on Titan only, but make it cost no MP, have a 30 AOE range etc. so all you do is summon Titan, activate it, done.

Do you really know how these buffs works? EA is 2 times stronger than Scherzo, can lasts longer and you can put it back before it wears off...

[Covenant]

I certainly agree in regards to spirits. They are super silly to use, they font even have that "defense up" when talking about physical damage to them., as opposed to magical(Yes, someone explained to me that mob elementals get added bonuses for being a mob). If the natural phalanx was instituted for all spirits, you might get a better response, for melee'n spirits as a "tank" as opposed to avatars.
However, the idea that a summoner isn't possible to melee is really a lie. When you a compare a summoner using "good" gear, not great and their pets ability vs say a Redmage, they really are quite strong(physically). The ability of a summoner not only to soloskill chain, but to solo magic burst their own skill chains only adds to this strength.
This is not to say, that if you subtract a pets output then yes, they suck. Summoners also get some of the best melee staff options and coupled with a sub job such as /SAM, /WAR, or /THF can't added even more to their based melee damage.
I do agree that their is a disparity in the gear that grants "pet bonuses" with good-excellent additions. Adding 10% isn't great, in my book. I would like to see pet gear that may give them double or triple attacks. Or even simply a haste increase.

[Dallas]

I've never seen him need to have it mentioned first before

First post, paragraph 8ish. I never need to, and this was no exception. (^^)d

Mala says that SE has never given SMN the tools to DD. Unlimited MP is the only tool needed to DD as SMN. Mala, as you can see from later posts, is not 100% averse to melee.

I try to know my audience. I'm pretty sure I know Mala as well as Mala knows me. Mala would be a fabulous owner of Hvergelmir.

[Covenant]

The funny thing I remember about being summoner was an avatars ability to gain access to tier elemental spells BEFORE blackmages. I don't remember the exact range but avatars got tier II and tier IV before a BLM and was able to magic burst them first as well. Somewhere this "bonus" was lost and I can't even begin to explain an avatars merit magic spells compared to an ancient magic or tier V elemental spell.
Why has SquareEnix fail to address this issue is beyond me?

[Ironside]

Sorry for the slow reply. I had one all nice and typed out and then when I tried to post it, it said the token had expired, and I lost the whole thing. Kinda frustrating. Anyway!

Numerically you may be correct, but numbers are not the same as reality. You have to for example consider that you'd have twice as many COR players, if the job wasn't so expensive. That makes COR = SMN in popularity. Then you should consider that COR is a new job, while SMN is an old, meaning there should be more SMNs than CORs purely by years of existence. In addition to that, over half of those SMN numbers are people who leveled it only for astral burning good jobs to 75. So popularity ranked, COR is higher than SMN by far. But due to game exploits, SMN managed to be twice as popular.

First, I'd like to see where this bit about having twice as many CORs if it were less expensive is coming from. The only times I've ever heard people complain about COR being expensive are people who play COR; while my sample size is definitely small, most of the people I've talked to just don't care about COR. It's not that it's expensive, people just don't care. I'll grant that a fair bit of SMN's popularity comes from AFBs, but that doesn't change that it's more popular.

What are you blabbering about? B staff being a proof you should not melee, but C H2H is proof you should? Just admit that you only looked at MP and said "Ah, MP, this job shouldn't melee". It is so obvious SMN is meant to melee, but on a wyvern level, being the opposite of a DRG. (Which falls short because wyverns dying isn't so bad, but Summoners dying is slightly workse. Not to mention avatars DoT is terrible compared to a DRG or a pet jug)

PUP has B+ H2H now, actually. SE realized they set it too low initially. Every job (with the exception of SCH) has a weapon skill at B- or higher, but that doesn't mean that they're meant to be meleeing. (SCH's highest skills are Club and Staff, tied at C+.) In most situations, if I saw a BLM meleeing with their B- staff skill, I'd honestly laugh at them. I don't see how SMN having a B in staff as opposed to a B- means that they're meant to be meleeing, much less making it "so obvious." For that matter, SMN is tied for the lowest STR and VIT in the game, as well as the second-lowest DEX (sorry, WHM). Not seeing how it's obvious, aside from "something to do while waiting on BP timers" and even then it puts you at much higher risk due to SMN's low VIT and HP.

Do me a favor and don't put words in my mouth, by the way: having MP does not mean a job should not be meleeing. Case in point, Blue Mage and -arguably- Red Mage, while the inverse is also untrue, since Bard lacks MP but should probably not be meleeing. Meleeing also gives SMN something to do during downtime, sure, but it's not the purpose of the job, and is far from "so obvious" that they are supposed to be doing it.

(Related tangent: by "conceptualized" I was referring in SMN's case to previous appearances in the Final Fantasy series, and in PUP's to its job description and history since it lacks said prior appearances. Use of sainti and hand-to-hand combat is mentioned in PUP's description and backstory, while Summoner has always been largely reliant on its summons, with no melee capability to speak of and varying degrees of other magic.)

But Summoner buffs rely on moon phase and time of day, which is worse than rolls, which you actually have a choice with. And if you want to talk strong, shell V is a god send for countering magic damage, but that isn't 3 minutes long. Glittering ruby, which is much worse, is 1 min long. It just doesn't make sense. Good spells lasting 15 min, bad spells 1 min, and they think it is balanced?

Shuerzo or whatever it is called is the best example. BRD can toss this up when needed, SMN has to summon titan, run up, have their global BP timer ready, activate it for 4 seconds, and spend 100 MP. It is like BRD is a million times better for this than SMN. Wouldn't it be enough if BRD was 4 times as good or something instead? Like keep it on Titan only, but make it cost no MP, have a 30 AOE range etc. so all you do is summon Titan, activate it, done.

Exactly two avatars have buffs that rely on moon phase or time of day, and that's Fenrir and Diabolos, respectively. Two out of nine. Also, just throwing this out there, Glittering Ruby is also level 44, while Shell V is level 78 for the job made around healing and buffing, 87 and 90 for the others that get it, and costs 1.5x the MP of Glittering Ruby.

Someone else already covered your Scherzo example, but I'd like to also add that using Scherzo is sacrificing another of BRD's buffs that the party could be using. I'd hardly call it "a million times better" than SMN for it, and I'd hesitate strongly before even calling it four times better. Helps that the two stack.

I'd say anything but the monthly MAB armors we are getting. Either pet melee enhancements like +20% haste, or Summoner melee enhancements like +20% haste. Ideally hybrid sets, like BST and PUP get. Why SMN doesn't get hybrid sets when it is a hybrid job is beyond me. (Even better question is why we get BLM armors)

Again, someone already hit most of this; SMN doesn't get hybrid armors because SMN itself is not a hybrid job. SMN is a pet-oriented mage. SMN's avatars function as hybrids, but since they define SMN's functionality, SMN itself cannot be called a hybrid. (Also, while I do agree that MAB isn't useful for SMN, it gets mage armors because storywise, it's a mage.)

It was the best 2 hour in the game. Imagine having a 2 hour that lasts until "it" dies. While other jobs had instant or 30 seconds 2 hours, DRGs had one that could last 24 hours, and it only needed to last 2 hours before it had maxed out potency.

How easy it died was a problem, but there was no problem with it being a 2 hour. Though most people could only see as far as "Well, we are fighting this BCNM and I want to 2 hour. Why can't my DRG deal massive damage in a short time?" so naturally they'd complain.

DRG's armor was largely based around enhancing the wyvern; having said wyvern die very easily and only be summonable every two hours was not a proper use for either that gear or a 2-hour ability, and having your wyvern die made DRG basically just a weaker version of some other DD until their 2-hour came up again.

Do notice that none of those less useful abilites share the same spell timer though. Summoner is the only job with global timers, making a less excellent spell instantly useless due to unable to cast it while doing the best ones. I still think BLU and BLM should have global recasts as well. This would accomplish two things:

1) No BLU or BLM would pull hate, and they'd all live happily ever after for being a hate free job.
2) Everyone would know how terrible of an idea global timers is and we'd have the whole forum in a riot asking for their removal.

SMN without global timers would largely obsolete BRD and COR as jobs, since they'd be able to repeatedly use AoE Phalanx, Stoneskin, Blink, Warcry, Ice Spikes, Haste, Acc/Eva/Attributes Boost and whatever else they want (let's not even start on Avatar's Favor), as well as alternating high damage bloodpacts every few seconds, thus also outdamaging many DDs. Also, most "less useful" spells for other jobs are useless too, since MP and time spent on them is MP and time not spent casting something better.

I've never said anything else. The job is fine, as a kind of SATA THF without Treasure Hunter ability. We can join a fight, toss in some high numbers every minute, and keep ourselves alive.

But this is like saying, DRK is fine, it has stun. Or PLD is fine, it has cure IV. You can't just look at a single spell or JA, claim it is useful, and then say that it doesn't matter if nothing else works, you have one thing working. Another good example would be to say THF is fine, it has TH, back when TH was hit the mob once and then stand and watch.

What Summoner needs more than anything else, is interactivity. We need something to do between each Predator Claws. While we can toss out hastega, it is kind of pointless if there are nobody needing hastega in the vicinity. While we can toss out evasion aura, it is not sure to help. We could even swap to spirits, and they do nothing. We could run up and melee, but we aren't much better than PUPs in mage gear at melee.

All these "could, but not worth it" parts needs an improvement. You can't make the most jack of all trades jobs ever, and then have everything so weak you end up as a one trick pony.

Strong (if short-duration) AoE buffs, high-damage Rages, high degree of personal safety, pets that don't cost money or have a long recast on death. Which of those is that "one trick" or "one spell or JA" that's working?

Also; If Hastega isn't needed, use something that could be useful, like Aerial Armor or Earthen Ward. If Garuda's Favor isn't needed, then don't use it; enjoy the extra attack and MAB for not having Avatar's Favor active. Another fun part of SMN: it has options.

Does SMN always have something to do? No, and it's one of the only jobs for which that's true. However, the avatar is not monopolizing the summoner's resources; they could be tossing buffs or cures from your subjob if they're that bored. What's more, is they're one of the only jobs that can be contributing to a fight while staying near-constantly out of AoE range and having very little risk of taking hate in a party situation.

[RAIST]

Glittering Ruby is also level 44, while Shell V is level 78 for the job made around healing and buffing, 87 and 90 for the others that get it, and costs 1.5x the MP of Glittering Ruby

It's actually Shining Ruby, earned at level 24, lasts for 3 minutes and is listed as a 10% defense/magic defense bonus. Never really paid much attention to whether it scales at 10% on the physical defense side of it, has a cap, or is a flat boost and that is a "typo" of sorts.

Compare it to the Prot/Shell combinations available at level 24:

Protect 1 (all jobs): 9 mp cost, 10 DEF
Shell 1 (all jobs): 18 mp cost, roughly a 9.5% MDB


So, at level 24, SMN is able to buff for roughly the same defensive effect for a fraction of the duration, for 160% the cost.

Edit: just ran out and popped Shining Ruby as a naked 90 SMN/WHM Hume and defense went from 143 to 156. Then cast Protect 1 and it went up to 167(143+10+14), and Protect 2 took me to 184 (143+25+16), so it would appear it does scale on some sort of x/1024 factor...hovering around the 9-10% value. Guessing it is about 9.4% like Shell--hard to say for certain as it is flooring the bonus.

So, it has the potential to be a potent defense bonus I guess for it's cost on a level 90 player (potentially around the 40+ DEF mark, but still ~9.4% MDB)--but compare that to Prot/Shell 3 that give 40 DEF and ~19% MDB for 30 minutes and costs only 96 mp to cast. Takes anywhere from 15-30 seconds to summon, get carby to front line and fire it off--Prot/Shell can both be cast from a distance inside of 15 seconds.

So, in this case the SMN buff is a bit out of whack for something to maintain on a lengthy fight. But for short term effect, it "shines" (pardon the pun).

[Razushu]

First post, paragraph 8ish. I never need to, and this was no exception. (^^)d

Mala says that SE has never given SMN the tools to DD. Unlimited MP is the only tool needed to DD as SMN. Mala, as you can see from later posts, is not 100% averse to melee.

I try to know my audience. I'm pretty sure I know Mala as well as Mala knows me. Mala would be a fabulous owner of Hvergelmir.

I fail to se how MP is a DD tool. high STR, DEX, VIT and AGI or native Double attack, accuracy bonus, attack bonus would be what I would consider melee tools, these or any of the many melee centric job abilities. Also just because a SMN could build a TP/WS gear set dopesn't mean we should, I mean we could build an excellent Nuking or enfeebling set too but I've never seen anyone do it or say we should.